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15 July 2012

Watermarking. do it.

The internet is amazing. I love that we have access to pretty much everything we want. Information, knowledge, videos, pictures... everything is at our fingertips. It really is pretty handy dandy, isn't it?

But as wonderful as that all is for the well intentioned, internet-obsessed-blogaholic (like muhself)... there are also things that people need to take into consideration. Let's just face it, there are a lot of creepers out there. If you have a public blog, and you post photos on it - you are just opening yourself up to those yucky people who might steal your beautiful pictures. And who knows what they do with them. It's so so sad that people would ever do that, but it happens. It has made me rethink whether I want to share this much of my personal life with the public. BUT at the end of the day, this is my journal, my kids' baby book, and my own personal space so I want to be able to share these photos here. Luckily, there are things we can do to protect our images, and our children!

Watermarking.

It's SO important. Not only to protect our images from creepy creepers, but to make sure that companies (like pinterest and facebook.... etc) can't use them or sell them without our knowledge. And if they do take the image from our blog, they'll have a dang hard time removing that watermark plastered on the image. And if they don't care about the watermark, then we get the credit at least.

There are a lot of great tutorials out there on how to create a watermark, here is a video tutorial I found on how to make a watermark in Photoshop. If you don't use photoshop, try googling the editing software program you use, along with the word "watermark" and you'll probably find a tutorial!

Some things to note about watermarking:

Make sure the watermark is large enough to read, and see clearly if the image is small.

Place the watermark over a part of the image that has a lot going on. Lots of colors and textures. That way, people won't be able to easily clone it out. We want to make it hard for people to get rid of it!

If you're putting pictures of people on your blog/FB or other outlets, be sure that your watermark is very close to the face. That way, people can't crop it out.

Here is an example. The 1st image, is how I used to watermark. I realized that was silly because in an image like this, the person trying to steal the image wouldn't have to work very hard to get rid of it. The 2nd image is how I usually watermark my images now. If they REALLY wanted to, they could spend a ton of time to remove it, but chances are - it isn't worth the trouble for them.
If you want to be really safe, put the watermark over the face. It isn't pretty but hey, I doubt someone will steal it.

The bottom line is, blog responsibly. It's annoying that we need to worry about these kinds of things but, sadly, we do. So, if you don't want people taking/using your images, put a watermark on it!!

I was doing it for a while but I stopped doing it b/c it was kind of a pain to separately watermark every picture i put online ... but reading this makes me really think I need to do it again.... asap. Thanks!

Thank you so much!!! I used to watermark my pictures but it kind of looked like your first photo. And then I stopped bc it was taking me to long to put the watermark on there, but you totally made me realize I need to start doing it.